MH370 piloted into sea – crash expert

CANBERRA (Xinhua) – A leading air crash expert has said missing Malaysia Airlines fight MH370 was likely to have been in controlled flight as it hit the water, giving life to the theory it was brought down by a rogue pilot or hijacker.

Air crash expert Larry Vance told Australia’s Nine Network that there was no other way to explain why the flaperon, found off the coast of Madagascar, was “extended” meaning it would have been in controlled flight as it hit the water.

Vance said the only way to extend the flaperon, something which happens when a plane is attempting a landing, was for the pilot to engage a switch, something which is unlikely to have occurred during an sudden disaster.

“You cannot get the flaperon to extend any other way than if somebody extended it,” Vance told the Nine Network’s 60 Minutes program overnight. “Somebody would have to select it (in the cockpit).”

Vance said, from photos released of the flaperon, there was evidence to show the airplane hit the water at a controlled speed, pointing to it being a “human engineered event.”

“Somebody was flying the airplane into the water… There is no other alternate theory that you can follow of all the potentials that might have happened. There’s no other theory that fits,” he said.

“The force of the water is really the only thing that could make that jagged edge that we see (on the flaperon). It wasn’t broken off. If it was broken off, it would be a clean break.”